More and more individuals are conducting personal, professional, and social affairs online and through social media. Nearly every business has an online presence over the Internet and nearly every individual above the age of 14 has at least some presence on one or more social media platforms.
The rate at which individuals are performing online transactions with the businesses continues to be nearly exponential. Middle-aged adults and older adults are the reason that most brick-and-mortar storefronts are staying afloat in the industry. Younger adults and teenagers have become fully immersed in mobile transaction processing and social media activity.
However, even the younger adults and the teenagers often prefer to physically visit some stores for purposes of trying on apparel. Social acceptance and social likes have become a part of the younger generations existence, such that even if an individual is happy with the way a piece of apparel fits and looks on them, that individual will quickly return the apparel if friends on social media disagree.
Conversely, if the apparel is liked by the friends, the word spreads quickly on social media providing a no cost and lucrative advertisement for the apparel's manufacturers, distributors, and retailers. Yet, at present manufacturers, distributors, and retailers have no way of knowing, monitoring, planning, and controlling social media successes beyond paying a celebrity a healthy amount of money to wear and promote a product on social media. However, sometimes the best successes come from non-celebrities on social media.
At the same time that his phenomenon is occurring with the younger generation, social media platforms have yet to figure out how to generate revenue and become profitable even when such platforms have hundreds of millions if not a billion plus users. Furthermore, the social media presence by businesses is weak at best and often viewed as more of a nuisance by the younger generation.
As a result, both the social media platforms and businesses are struggling to reach and expand revenues with this younger generation. Concurrently, the younger generation is not purchasing apparel at rates that it could be expected to because of social stigma with their social media friends and because purchasing often requires physically visiting a brick-and-mortar storefront, which can be inconvenient and which is less conducive to impulse purchasing that online purchasing.